"Law à la Carte" Conference

The NYS Courts Access to Justice Program hosted an all-day conference on limited scope practicing for low and moderate income clients at the New York City Civil Court on October 14, 2015. The conference, co-sponsored by the NYS Courts Access to Justice Program and the NYS Bar Association was also simulcasted to the New York State Bar in Albany.

The event addressed the important topic of limited scope representation, also known as unbundling, as one way to close the access to justice gap. The ethics, best practices and models of delivering legal services via limited scope representation were explored by national and New York experts, including James Sandman, President, Legal Services Corporation, William Hornsby, Counsel, ABA Standing Committee on Delivery of Legal Services, Hon. Dina Fein, Special Advisor, Access to Justice Initiatives, Massachusetts Courts, NYS Bar Association President-elect, Claire Gutekunst, and William Russell, NYS Bar Association’s President’s Committee on Access to Justice.

The conference was designed to inform, explore and address many of the issues of limited scope services. For the first time in New York this conference provided a forum for more than one hundred bar leaders, legal services attorneys, law firm pro bono coordinators, private practitioners, law school faculty and judges to come together to discuss this timely issue.